Justice Ginsberg Needs to Explain Herself

Catholic League president Bill Donohue says U.S. Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg needs to explain her recent comment on abortion and eugenics:

Excerpts of a New York Times Magazine interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which will appear on July 12, include the following quote by the Supreme Court Justice about the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion: “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

By contrast, consider what Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, said about this subject:

· “Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need…We must prevent Multiplication of this bad stock.”
· “Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”
· “Today eugenics is suggested by the most diverse minds as the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.”
· “We are paying for, and even submitting to, the dictates of an ever-increasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.”
· “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”

There is another reason why Ginsburg needs to clarify her remark. Before she was seated on the Supreme Court in 1993, she hired 57 law clerks over a period of 13 years. All were white. Now if Antonin Scalia, for example, were associated with her disturbing remark, and if he had never hired a single African American, he already would have been branded a racist. At the very least, Ginsburg should be questioned about her explosive comment.

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